Attack of the Giant Rodents

Two days after the author talk at Mysterious Galaxy, I was taken on a tour of the world famous San Diego Zoo, by none other than zoo volunteer and well known giraffe-kisser L.T. Host. (If you've ever seen her avatar, you'll know what I mean.)

LT and friends
Only a couple of weeks before, L.T. had upgraded from giraffes to her very own husband, Scott, who is an incredibly nice guy, and very patient with out-of-towners disrupting his life.

LT and husband Scott. Giraffes now forsaken.
Scott and L.T. introduced me to the native food of San Diego: fish tacos.

I'll ignore every animal in the wildly fantastic zoo except for these:



This is a capybara. It's the largest rodent in the world. It grows to about 1.3 meters in length. That's a bit over 4 feet.


If you found these in your attic, you really would have a serious rodent problem. The pictures don't begin to tell you how big these things are. We keep guinea pigs, which are also rodents, but a guinea pig is tiny in comparison. This is how tiny:

Taken from gianthamster.com
Yes, that's a guinea pig on the capybara's back. This is the most famous capybara in the world. His name is Caplin Rous, and he has more twitter followers than I do.